“THE major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly,” said Bernie Sanders in a 23-minute address live-streamed across the country from his hometown of Burlington, Vermont on June 16th. But rather than conceding defeat and focusing his energy on helping his rival, Hillary Clinton, to inflict that defeat, the combative senator stood pat on his principal mission: “We must continue our grassroots efforts to create the America that we know we can become. And we must take that energy into the Democratic National Convention on July 25th in Philadelphia.”
The speech was a disappointment to those who hoped that Mr Sanders would at last rally behind Mrs Clinton, who needs the support of his young and enthusiastic troops. But he does not seem to trust her to keep the flame of his revolution alive. “It is no secret that Secretary Clinton and I have strong disagreements on some very important issues,” he said. He vowed to continue discussions between his campaign and hers, to make sure that his supporters’ voices are heard and that the Democratic Party passes the most progressive platform in its history. He would work with Mrs Clinton, he said, to transform their party into a party of the working class and young people, and not just wealthy campaign contributors. He wants the Democrats to have “the courage to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil-fuel industry and the other powerful special interests”.
Earlier on June 16th Jeff Weaver, Mr Sanders’s campaign manager, conceded that the senator was no longer lobbying superdelegates, putting an end to an argument made by some Bernie fans: that they still had a shot at the nomination by winning over office-bearers. Mr Weaver insisted that the Democratic Party would come out of the convention as a very unified party. But his boss seemed to contradict him a few hours later by insisting on his “political and social revolution”—and a credo that is much more progressive than Mrs Clinton’s.
This campaign was always about transforming America, he said. “It is about ending a campaign-finance system which is corrupt and allows billionaires to buy elections. It is about ending the grotesque level of wealth and income inequality that we are experiencing, where almost all new wealth and income goes to the people on top, where the 20 wealthiest people own more wealth than the bottom 150m.” He talked about Americans dying at a younger age than their parents because of unemployment, low wages, suicide, drugs and alcohol, and deplored that America had the highest level of childhood poverty of almost any major country. An advocate of a universal health-care system and tuition-free state colleges, he insisted that his campaign is “about ending the disgrace of tens of thousands of Americans dying every year from preventable deaths because they either lack health insurance, have high deductibles or cannot afford the outrageously high cost of the prescription drugs they need.”
Even as he professed beliefs that the pragmatic Mrs Clinton will never embrace, and thus emphasised their disunity, he also seemed to start a long goodbye to his supporters, by thanking them and taking account of what they achieved. Together, 2.7m people made over 8m individual contributions to our campaign, he said, more than to any campaign in American history. And most of the dosh came from low-income contributors whose donations averaged $27 apiece. The campaign received more than 12m votes by winning 22 state primaries and caucuses and coming very close to winning in five other states.
Mr Sanders is right when he says that his ideas can no longer be dismissed as those of a fringe. Almost everyone underestimated him, including Mrs Clinton, who ignored him for too long, to her detriment. Mr Sanders himself admitted that he had not anticipated such a success. But he will be judged by how he manages the remarkable inroads he has made into the established eco-system. Being a thorn in the side of his party’s candidate in one of the most important presidential races in history may not be the best way to go about it.
Many Democrats have already moved into general-election mode. Also on June 16th the leadership of the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions with 12m members, endorsed Mrs Clinton. The unions vowed that “it will put in motion its ground campaign to elect Hillary Clinton and union-endorsed candidates across the country”. Mr Trump came out with an angry statement on the same day, claiming that more AFL-CIO members will vote for him than for Mrs Clinton, whom he called an “enemy of the working people”. He also cited Mr Sanders’s attacks against her. “Hillary Clinton and her husband have made hundreds of millions of dollars doing favours and selling access to Wall Street, special interests and oppressive foreign regimes,” said Mr Trump. “As Bernie Sanders said, ‘Why, over her political career, has Wall Street been the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton?’ They own Hillary Clinton and she will do whatever they tell her to’.”
If Mr Sanders is really as committed to defeating Mr Trump as he says he is, he should perhaps try to avoid giving Mr Trump any additional ammunition against Mrs Clinton. He frequently pointed out polls that suggested he would be more likely than Mrs Clinton to beat Mr Trump in a general-election match. He should now put that advantage to good use.